Video Transcript
[birdsong]
[inspiring music]
[Steve Swanson, instructor]: I have a student team that is working on a heads-up display for a NASA spacesuit, and they wanted to test out some of their product. And I’ve brought in some NASA astronauts and also a flight director, and we’re going to do like a simulation on the Lunar South Pole. Well, they will have on a HoloLens, which will be a simulation for their heads up display. So it will give them the ability to look out to the real world at the same time, have holograms show up in their view, and they can have procedures, other things like that that will pop up for them and help them with the information they need to perform their spacewalk.
(table saw cutting)
[Benedicto Villanueva, student]: Tonight we are currently testing the ARSIS system. The ARSIS system is an augmented reality spacesuit informatics system that we are developing for the NASA SUITS challenge for NASA. The best way to describe it is think of how Iron Man sees the world through his helmet, and that’s what we’re trying to replicate and tailor it for use in space navigation and exploration. So we’re able to give the astronauts an extra set of tools, whereas on a normal mission up into space, every bit of weight matters. So we can replicate tools in a virtual space that would reduce the weight, overall reduce cost, and make the astronaut a little more autonomous when they’re not in contact with ground control.
[Reid Wiseman, NASA astronaut]: Background on my job, I got hired by NASA in 2009 to be an astronaut. I flew to the International Space Station in 2014 with Dr. Swanson, which was a great treat for me. And I’m out here because we’re going to work with Dr. Swanson and his team to simulate being on the South Pole of the moon.
[birdsong]
[music fades]
[Reid]: Why are we researching the Lunar South Pole? Because the Artemis missions that we’re going to start launching in 2024 here, the objective is to get humans on the South pole of the moon. So in about 2 to 3 years, we’re looking to ride a Space X Lander human landing system to the Lunar South Pole and start a long term sustained human presence to do research, to learn how to work off the earth in the deep space environment.
[inspiring music fades in]
The unique thing about this area is, well, first we’re in Dr. Swanson’s yard, so we have all the access that we need to Wi-Fi, to lights, to the team in his garage, which I think is great. But being here in Boise, Idaho, this is kind of a perfect, simple analog to the lunar environment. We’ve got basalts all over the place. We’ve got a lot of good geology in this area. We’ve got some great terrain. We’re going to wait a little bit later until the sun gets down on the horizon to kind of simulate these high sun grazing angles that we’ll see on the Lunar South Pole.
[Greg Whitney, NASA Flight Director]: So one of the things that that I really think best describes mission control is just a team of problem solvers. You know, everyone has their technical area that they’re experts in, but they have to all come together and try to solve a common goal.
And today, the students, based on my understanding, have been trying to solve these technical problems, pulling overnighters for several days now, which is pretty typical, you know, as far as when you’re dealing with complex problems.
But then we’re going to put them into the operations environment, and things are not going to go the way that they are hoping that they go or plan to go.
[student]: I was closing the procedure. (laughs)
[Greg]:And so we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with that in real time and do it as a team. And I think there’s a lot of similarities between teamwork and having folks out in the field and what we do in mission control with the space station. And I think one of the really important things to always remember is that everyone has something to bring to the team, and it’s really just trying to find that unique ability that will help make this whole thing successful. And I think we’ll get a good chance to try that out today.
[Reid]: It’s really neat to see these young students out there using their creativity, using their minds and using modern technology just very, very quickly, rapidly prototype, talk to us, see what we like, what we don’t like, and then they go and iterate their design. It’s really a neat relationship we have with them.
[Steve]: Favorite experiences working at Boise State is just working with the students and watching them grow and learn. I’ve had multiple students get internships at NASA, and then go on and become NASA employees. Two of them right now are working to become flight controllers in mission control on the International Space Station. So it’s just great to watch them go through the process and grow and fulfill their dreams, and I think it’s great to be part of that process.
[cheering and applause]
[Graphic: Orange “B” logo, Boise State University]